Chapter 9 of What the Judiciary Was and What It Has Become 

[A record of the Malaysian Judiciary, before 1988 to now]

On 4 October 1988 two judges of the Supreme Court lost their offices. Three others got theirs back.

Chapter 7 ended there. This chapter begins the morning after.

Three men go back to work

Tan Sri Mohamed Azmi Kamaruddin, Tan Sri Eusoffe Abdoolcader and Tan Sri Wan Hamzah returned to the bench. They had been charged, tried and acquitted on every charge. They came back without ceremony.

Now do the arithmetic. So far as this series can find, nobody has.

In 1988 the Constitution made a judge of the Supreme Court retire at sixty-five. The King could allow six months more, and no more than that. The age was raised to sixty-six only in 2005.¹Federal Constitution, art 125(1). The words “sixty-six years” were substituted for “sixty-five years” by the Constitution (Amendment) Act 2005, Act A1239, s 3, in force 21 March 2005: Federal Constitution (Reprint as at 15 October 2020, Attorney General’s Chambers of Malaysia), Notes to art 125, Clause (1), note (e).

Tan Sri Wan Hamzah was born on 12 December 1923.²Malaysian Bar, ‘In Memoriam: Tan Sri Wan Hamzah bin Wan Muhammad Salleh’ (Malaysian Bar, 2015), giving his birth on 12 December 1923 at Kota Bharu, his appointment to the High Court on 27 March 1971 and to the Federal Court on 1 October 1984, and his death on 12 June 2015. He turned sixty-five ten weeks after he was cleared.

Tan Sri Eusoffe Abdoolcader was born on 11 September 1924. He turned sixty-five eleven months after.

Two of the three men handed their offices back were already at the door.

A limit, stated plainly. This series has not established the date each man finally left the bench. Nor whether any of them was given the extra six months. What is established is the retirement age, and the two birth dates.

The Bar goes to court

The Malaysian Bar is the professional body of every practising lawyer in the country. Its governing council resolved to act within weeks of 2 July 1988.

It did not reach the Supreme Court until April 1989.³The Malaysian Bar’s own report of the judgment gives the date of its resolution as 19 July 1988. The court found a lapse of “nearly nine months” between the resolution and the application, and held it unexplained: see (n 3).

What it asked for was leave to bring contempt proceedings against the Acting Lord President. Contempt of court means conduct that obstructs the work of a court. Leave means the court’s permission to start. The Bar wanted the Acting Lord President committed to prison.⁴Malaysian Bar v Tan Sri Abdul Hamid [1989] 2 MLJ 281; [1989] 2 CLJ 373 (SC), judgment 29 April 1989. Coram: Hashim Yeop A Sani CJ (Malaya), Mohamed Yusoff and Gunn Chit Tuan SCJJ. Verified on Lexis Advance, 9 August 2026.[/mfn

The particulars were not in dispute. On 2 July 1988 the Acting Lord President had told the registry to take no step without his directions. Then he learned that an application had been filed anyway. He instructed that the courtrooms be kept closed. That the staff not assist. That no registrar sign any order. That the court seal not be made available.

Chapter 6 described the afternoon those instructions were meant to stop. Chapter 7 recorded that the tribunal itself found he had given them.

But there was a problem before any of that could be argued.

The judges who would hear the case worked for the man complained of. So the Bar asked first for a different bench. It wanted the Lord President to advise the King to appoint additional judges. Retired judges. Outsiders.

That application was heard on 28 April 1989 and dismissed. The court held it had no power to tell the Lord President how to exercise a constitutional function. And it held there was no question of bias.⁴Malaysian Bar v Tan Sri Dato Abdul Hamid bin Omar (No 2) [1989] 2 MLJ 283 (SC), judgment 28 April 1989. Same coram. Verified on Lexis Advance, 9 August 2026.

The judge who presided, and who gave the judgment, was Tan Sri Hashim Yeop A Sani.

Eight months earlier he had been appointed to chair the tribunal trying the five judges. Counsel objected that ordinary members of the public might see a real likelihood of bias. He withdrew the same day. Chapter 7 set that down as the honourable act it was.

In April 1989 the same objection was made about the same events. This time he sat, and held there was nothing in it.

The reason that undid everything

The next day the court refused leave. It gave three reasons.⁵Malaysian Bar v Tan Sri Abdul Hamid (n 3), the Held passage.

The first was standing. Standing, or locus standi, is the question whether a particular person is entitled to bring a particular case at all. The court thought it questionable whether the Bar had it. The Legal Profession Act 1976 gives the Bar the duty of upholding the cause of justice. That was not enough.

The rule it applied came from Government of Malaysia v Lim Kit Siang, decided on 16 March 1988.⁶Government of Malaysia v Lim Kit Siang [1988] 2 MLJ 12 (SC), 16 March 1988, recorded on Lexis Advance as followed in Malaysian Bar v Tan Sri Abdul Hamid (n 3). Chapter 3 of this series describes the case. Chapter 3 told that story. It was decided two days before the Prime Minister rose in Parliament to present the amendment Bill.

The second reason was the one that mattered.

The sitting of 2 July 1988, the court held, was illegal and without jurisdiction. Only the Lord President may convene the Supreme Court and choose its judges, whether the sitting is scheduled or not. It followed that there was no lawful process for anyone to obstruct. No lawful sitting, no contempt.

Read that against Chapter 7. The tribunal had put that same allegation to all five judges. It refused to find misbehaviour. They had acted honestly, and without improper motive. They were acquitted.

The finding survived the acquittal. It was now the reason the Bar lost.

The third reason was delay. Nearly nine months had passed, and it was unexplained. Allegations of contempt, the court said, should be pursued within a reasonable time.

The Secretary in the dock

Then the case turned round.

To bring the application, the Secretary of the Bar Council had sworn an affidavit. An affidavit is a written statement of evidence, sworn to be true. His name was Manjeet Singh Dhillon.

He said in it that the Acting Lord President had committed contempt on 2 July 1988. That he was abusing his official position. That his conduct was contempt of the grossest imaginable kind, and misbehaviour under Article 125 deserving removal from office.

The Attorney General applied to have him committed to prison.

On 5 November 1990 the Supreme Court found him guilty of contempt, by two to one. The offence is called scandalising the court. It means saying things about a judge that damage public confidence in the courts. The words must go beyond reasonable courtesy and good faith.⁷Attorney General v Manjeet Singh Dhillon [1991] 1 MLJ 167 (SC), judgment 5 November 1990. Coram: Harun Hashim, Mohamed Yusoff and Gunn Chit Tuan SCJJ. Verified on Lexis Advance, 9 August 2026.

Because he had acted in his official capacity for the Bar, and not for himself, prison was thought inappropriate. He was fined five thousand ringgit, with three months’ imprisonment if he did not pay.

One judge dissented. Tan Sri Harun Hashim took a different view. In closing the courtrooms the Acting Lord President had not been exercising judicial power. He had been giving administrative instructions. Abuse of a judge, however damaging, is not contempt unless it touches his judicial work.

Harun Hashim is the judge who held in February 1988 that UMNO was an unlawful society. Chapter 2 was about that. He is also the judge who stayed away from the sitting of 2 July. Chapter 6 was about that.

He was the only member of the court who would not convict the Bar’s Secretary.

What became of them

Tan Sri Eusoffe Abdoolcader died at his home in Penang on 11 January 1996. His wife had died three years before him. He took his own life.⁸The date and manner of his death are reported consistently in published retrospectives: see, for example, The Malaysian Insight (Kuala Lumpur, 2018) and the entry in the English Wikipedia, which cites it. No primary record has been seen by this series. He was born on 11 September 1924.

Tan Sri Mohamed Azmi Kamaruddin died on 5 January 2009, aged seventy-five.⁹‘Former Supreme Court judge Azmi dies at 75’ The Star (Kuala Lumpur, 6 January 2009).

Tan Sri Wan Hamzah died on 12 June 2015, aged ninety-one.¹⁰Malaysian Bar, ‘In Memoriam’ (n 2). The Malaysian Bar’s own memorial page describes him as one of “the five Supreme Court judges who were sacked by the Second Tribunal”, and then says he was reinstated. He was never sacked. The error is recorded here because it is the Bar’s, and because it shows how quickly the record blurred.

Datuk Seri George Seah died on 20 April 2013, aged eighty-one. Tun Salleh Abas died on 16 January 2021, aged ninety-one. He had gone into politics, and then into farming.

Tan Sri Wan Suleiman Pawan Teh died before 2008; his widow collected what the Government eventually paid. The date of his death has not been established by this series. Nor has the eulogy Tun Suffian is said to have given for him.

Of the men who tried them, Datuk Edgar Joseph Jr rose to the Supreme Court and retired in 1999. Dato’ Lamin Mohd Yunus went to the Supreme Court in July 1994, and later became President of the Court of Appeal. Datuk Mohd Eusoff Chin stood fourteenth of the twenty-six High Court judges of Malaya in 1988. He became Chief Justice of Malaysia in September 1994, and held the office for six years. He died on 7 August 2026, two days before this chapter was written.¹¹Malaysian Bar, ‘In Memoriam: Tan Sri Lamin Mohd Yunus’; ‘Legal eagle Edgar Joseph Jr dies aged 90’ Free Malaysia Today (30 June 2024); ‘Former chief justice Mohamed Eusoff Chin passes away’ The Star (Kuala Lumpur, 7 August 2026), and ‘Eusoff’s tenure as chief justice drew controversy and scrutiny’ The Star (7 August 2026), giving his tenure as September 1994 to December 2000. Reports of his age at death differ. The seniority figures are George Seah’s: see Chapter 7.

The silence

In 2008 six eminent persons were asked to review the crisis of 1988. They produced eighty-one pages. It is the most careful account there is, and this series has leaned on it in every chapter.

Search it for the word “contempt”.

It appears once, on page eleven. It is about 1986.

The Bar’s application against the Acting Lord President is not in it. Neither is the ruling that the sitting of 2 July was illegal. Neither is Manjeet Singh Dhillon.¹²Panel of Eminent Persons, Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons to Review the 1988 Judicial Crisis in Malaysia (Malaysian Bar Council, International Bar Association, LAWASIA and Transparency International–Malaysia, 26 July 2008), 81 pp. Full-text searches of the report for “contempt”, “Manjeet”, “Dhillon” and “2 MLJ 281” were run on 9 August 2026. “Contempt” returns one match, at para 2.6. The other three return none.

The Bar went to court twice for the judges, and lost twice. The second time, it was the Bar that was punished.

Twenty years later, the Bar wrote the history, and left it out.

Next: Chapter 10 — a slow rebuilding.

Further reading. The Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons to Review the 1988 Judicial Crisis in Malaysia (2008) is published in full, free, by the Malaysian Bar. The two judgments discussed above are reported at [1989] 2 MLJ 281 and [1991] 1 MLJ 167.

 

 

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This article is written for a general readership and does not constitute technical or legal advice. Readers with legal questions are encouraged to seek independent legal advice.

The author thanks KN Geetha, TP Vaani, JN Lheela, and Lydia Jaynthi at GK Legal. Our gratitude to Elisabeth Jurenka of Unsplash for the image.

Claude, Anthropic’s AI, smoothed the drafting; Perplexity Pro checked the facts. The argument, the views, and the errors remain the author’s.

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